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drtz commented on Data centers in space makes no sense   civai.org/blog/space-data... · Posted by u/ajyoon
killerstorm · a month ago
People did the calculation: radiative cooling requires smaller surface area than solar panels. So, basically, a solar panel itself can radiate heat.

Have you done a calculation yourself?

drtz · a month ago
The same radiative (radiant) cooling on Earth works almost just as well, but without the cost of a rocket launch.
drtz commented on Data centers in space makes no sense   civai.org/blog/space-data... · Posted by u/ajyoon
FranklinJabar · a month ago
> There is probably plenty of scope to optimize space radiators. It was never a priority until now and is "just" an engineering problem.

Well, it's a physics problem. The engineering solution is possibly not cost efficient. I'd put a lot of money that it isn't.

drtz · a month ago
Not only is it not cost-effective, it's pointless (in this context).

Radiators works almost just as well on Earth. Convection and conduction more than make up the difference.

drtz commented on Data centers in space makes no sense   civai.org/blog/space-data... · Posted by u/ajyoon
mike_hearn · a month ago
It sounds hard but it shouldn't not make sense.

1. Solving cost of launching mass has been the entire premise of SpaceX since day one and they have the track record.

2. Ingress/egress aren't at all bottlenecks for inferencing. The bytes you get before you max out a context window are trivial, especially after compression. If you're thinking about latency, chat latencies are already quite high and there's going to be plenty of non-latency sensitive workloads in future (think coding agents left running for hours on their own inside sandboxes).

3. This could be an issue, but inferencing can be tolerant to errors as it's already non-deterministic and models can 'recover' from bad tokens if there aren't too many of them. If you do immersion cooling then the coolant will protect the chips from radiation as well.

4. There is probably plenty of scope to optimize space radiators. It was never a priority until now and is "just" an engineering problem.

5. What mass manufacture? Energy production for AI datacenters is currently bottlenecked on Siemens and others refusing to ramp up production of combined cycle gas turbines. They're converting old jet engines into power plants to work around this bottleneck. Ground solar is simply not being considered by anyone in the industry because even at AI spending levels they can't store enough power in batteries to ride out the night or low power cloudy days. That's not an issue in space where the huge amount of Chinese PV overproduction can be used 24/7.

drtz · a month ago
> It sounds hard but it shouldn't not make sense.

It does not make sense.

The question isn't "can you mitigate the problems to some extent?", it's "can you see a path to making satellite data centers more appealing than terrestrial?"

The answer is a flat out "no," and none of your statements contradict this.

Terrestrial will always be better:

1. Reducing the cost of launches is great, but it will never be as cheap as zero launches.

2. Radio transmissions have equally high bandwidth from Earth, but fiber is a better network backbone in almost every way.

3. Radiation events don't only cause unpredictable data errors, they can also cause circuit latch-ups and cascade into system failure. Error-free operation is still better in any case. Earth's magenetosphere and atmosphere give you radiation shielding for free, rad-hard chips will always cost more than standard (do they even exist for this application?), and extra shielding will always cost more than no shielding.

4. On Earth you can use conduction, convection, AND radiation for cooling. Space only gets you marginally more effective radiation.

5. Solar is cheaper on the ground than in space. The increase in solar collection capability per unit area in space doesn't offset the cost of launch: you can get 20kW of terrestrial solar collection for around the price of a single 1U satellite launch, and that solar production can be used on upgraded equipment in the future. Any solar you put on a satellite gets decommissioned when the inference hardware is obsolete.

And this ignores other issues like hardware upgrades, troubleshooting, repairs, and recycling that are essentially impossible in space, but are trivial on the ground.

drtz commented on Researchers map where solar energy delivers the biggest climate payoff   rutgers.edu/news/research... · Posted by u/rbanffy
drtz · 7 months ago
The fact that Brightline can take you from Miami to Orlando is wonderful, and I'm really happy Florida is embracing more efficient, less dangerous, and less stressful forms of transportation.

But using it to make a subtle jab agains CAHSR isn't really fair -- they're two very different projects (for one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR") in two very different regions.

Yes, it's harder to get big projects through the red tape in California than it is in West / Panhandle Texas or Central Florida. Go take a drive through those regions and you'll quickly see some reasons why, besides just NIMBYism, Californians are a bit more protective of their landscapes. If a massive wind project were proposed across large swaths of the Texas Hillcountry, you'd see a lot more push-back.

drtz · 7 months ago
Also, fwiw, we've had an HSR project in the works in Texas for a couple decades now and have yet to even make a solid plan, much less break ground.
drtz commented on Researchers map where solar energy delivers the biggest climate payoff   rutgers.edu/news/research... · Posted by u/rbanffy
oceanplexian · 7 months ago
California has already fallen behind both Texas and Florida in new utility grade solar. As for CA-HSR, no comment. But if you don't want to wait, you can buy a ticket today and ride Florida's new high speed rail between Orlando and Miami.
drtz · 7 months ago
The fact that Brightline can take you from Miami to Orlando is wonderful, and I'm really happy Florida is embracing more efficient, less dangerous, and less stressful forms of transportation.

But using it to make a subtle jab agains CAHSR isn't really fair -- they're two very different projects (for one of them, it's genuinely a stretch to call it "HSR") in two very different regions.

Yes, it's harder to get big projects through the red tape in California than it is in West / Panhandle Texas or Central Florida. Go take a drive through those regions and you'll quickly see some reasons why, besides just NIMBYism, Californians are a bit more protective of their landscapes. If a massive wind project were proposed across large swaths of the Texas Hillcountry, you'd see a lot more push-back.

drtz commented on Amazon Sued over Prime Video Ads: Class-Action Suit Alleges Deception   variety.com/2024/digital/... · Posted by u/speckx
JadeNB · 2 years ago
> More specifically, the total revenue of ads + the people willing to pay $3/month is greater than the revenue lost when people cancel their service due to ads

The bundling makes cancellation particularly unlikely: you can't (or at least I don't know how to) cancel the Prime Video part of the Prime package alone, so there's no way to show your dissatisfaction with this short of cancelling the entire Prime membership. Which this latest push, however small on its own, has been enough to get me finally to consider doing, but it's still tough.

drtz · 2 years ago
I consider myself lucky to have discovered how little value Prime has for shipping a few years ago when Target had a free Shipt promotion. I learned a couple things pretty quickly after I dropped Prime:

1. In most cases my Amazon orders took about the same amount of time to get to my house as they did with Prime: 3-4 days

2. Amazon has some terrible dark patterns. For example, on the product page you always see the lowest priced shipping option (usually free), but at checkout it defaults to paid shipping. It's really easy to accidentally pay an extra $5.99 for shipping, often with the same estimated arrival it would've had with free shipping.

drtz commented on Amazon Sued over Prime Video Ads: Class-Action Suit Alleges Deception   variety.com/2024/digital/... · Posted by u/speckx
gretch · 2 years ago
> why can't we just have something that's truly paid and ad-free?

We can. You just have to make it first.

This is not a question to ask of others, it a just question you ask yourself. Once you answer it for yourself, then just realize that same answer applies to everyone from their perspective.

drtz · 2 years ago
> We can. You just have to make it first.

But how? I don't have the resources to build something like this on my own. I'm skeptical I could convince many investors to give me money to build something pitched as "just like Prime Video but without the ad revenue" when Amazon has certainly already done market research and determined this is the best path to maximize profit.

drtz commented on Amazon Sued over Prime Video Ads: Class-Action Suit Alleges Deception   variety.com/2024/digital/... · Posted by u/speckx
johnnyo · 2 years ago
Because it’s more profitable to have something that is paid for AND has ads.

Same thing happened with cable TV when it first came out, it was advertised as ad free. Then it filled up with ads, and the streaming services came along promising no ads. Now the circle is repeating itself.

Here is the NYTimes in 1981 on the topic https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

drtz · 2 years ago
Thanks for sharing that NYT article.

> ...critics say that the use of sponsorship could make cable programmers more vulnerable to censorship or control by advertisers, particularly in light of recent efforts by organizations such as the Moral Majority and its offshoot, the Coalition for Better Television.

40+ years later I think it's pretty clear this was an accurate prediction.

> A much-cited - and widely disputed - study by the Benton & Bowles advertising agency found that the public would accept advertising if it meant a reduction or a holding-of-the-line on subscription fees...

This is great until a year later when YoY revenue growth is flat and prices are increased anyway.

u/drtz

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